Symmetry is a Trap

When I went to pick it up, the day-glo yellow on this desk was so intense I almost couldn't hear anything, but managed to make out the owner mouthing "twenty dollars." 

At home we called it 'the taxi cab.'

Shocking.  Normally I'd have painted right over it, but took it as something of a challenge to rid the desk (and the western hemisphere) of this color.  Let the stripping commence.

It took awhile.  And see those top outside drawers?  Interesting (in a good way) contour, but there was no access to the screws holding on the pulls.  I puzzled over that one for awhile, ultimately to discover (thanks Dad) that there was a dowel system in place to install the pull on both drawers.  Getting the existing screws sawed off took a special Dremmel saw attachment and a time-intensive effort.  Again, golf-clap for Dad.

Worth it?  Worth it.

Body talk [eyebrow raise].  I'd read people writing diabolical accounts of the dreaded, deadly-treacherous red mahogany stain.  If only I'd known that removing the cornea-damaging yellow wasn't the end of the transgressions visited upon this poor desk; I began to paint the body in off-white only to see a reddish-pink color staining through each coat (...after coat, after coat, after coat).  I switched to Kilz primer after four coats.  Bunch of passes with Kilz, then finally one more with the paint.  I wondered how this would work when it came time to distress.

In music, a hemiola is a rhythm of three beats against two.  I wasn't feeling like being symmetrical and wanted to see how some of the drawers would look stained, some painted.  After a lengthy search for 2.5" pulls that  work on contoured drawers (ooof, kids), results below...